Social media is a popular place for news. Although social media seems to be a reliable source for news, that is not necessarily the case when it comes to covid-19. There have been a number of times when social media led people to have false hope.
There have been many times when Instagram has been used to spread false information about
Covid-19. One such time was when Madonna posted saying that a vaccine has been availible for a while.
Other instances have occurred where influencers said that masks completely stop the spread of Covid-19
and that there is no need to social distance. Due to the spread of such rumors, Instagram has out
systems in place where you get a link to the CDC webpage when clicking on #coronavirus. There is also a warning when
opening posts that display unsafe behavior. If the posts promote unsafe behavior,
however, they will be removed from the platform.
Misinformation has also been spreading rapidly on Facebook. Nearly half of a billion people have viewed posts containing
misinformation. Posts containing such information are deadly according to researchers. One such post can lead to as many as
800 deaths. Facebook's systems can't handle all of the posts, so most of the posts are still on Facebook without any sort
of warning. Facebook is trying to remove misinformation posts but according to reports it has taken them as long as
one week to remove misinformations posts reported by third party groups.
Twitter has been the source of much misinformation also. One such case of misinformation was when Trump claimed
that children are almost immune to Covid-19 and that children should back to school immediately. Twitter removed
this post, causing controversy with the Republican Party. Twitter also removed posts from Brazilian President Jair
Bolsonaro for promoting that hydroxychloroquine will cure coronavirus. Twitter also took down similar posts from
Trump's lawyer. Twitter's strategies for removing posts is stopping Trump's team from repeatly posting misinformation.